Relationships are known to be chewed up and then spat out as content on reality television. More than most, Christine Quinn is aware of this. After years of witnessing her marriage fall apart in public, the woman who was once cast as Selling Sunset’s coolly brutal antagonist quietly rebuilt something more stable away from the cameras in Dallas, a city no one associates with Hollywood drama.
Early in 2025, shortly after Quinn filed for divorce from her ex-husband, Christian Dumontet, she started dating Thomas McGarrity. A domestic incident that was severe enough to lead to an arrest and a restraining order—the kind of information that usually follows a public figure long after the legal paperwork is resolved—was the cause of the split. It’s the kind of background that could discourage someone from making a fresh start. According to most accounts, Quinn didn’t wait to feel prepared.
McGarrity is neither an influencer seeking attention nor a reality TV star. He is a managing director and energy sales specialist at Texas Capital Bank. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he co-captained the football team and was named an All-American. That resume next to Quinn’s camera-ready, Instagram-heavy world seems almost archaic. Contrast might be precisely what has worked.
Less than a year after Quinn filed for divorce, the two were first seen kissing while on vacation in Cabo San Lucas in March 2025. Tabloids ran the pictures under breathless headlines, just like they usually do. However, unlike most of these stories, this one didn’t fizzle out. Over a year later, they remain together, continue to attend dinner in Beverly Hills, and appear to be unaffected by the commotion.
It’s important to recognize that tenacity. Relationships are flattened and consumed by reality television, which turns intimate moments into narratives and narratives into pressure. Many couples associated with the genre have failed to withstand that pressure. Quinn and McGarrity might have just avoided the machinery that destroys so many of these pairings because they were dating discreetly in Texas instead of performing for a Bravo-adjacent audience.
In late June, Quinn was seen with McGarrity at E Baldi in Beverly Hills. The two of them were out with their Doberman, which Quinn has bluntly described on social media. Wearing sunglasses and a Yankees cap, she appeared at ease in a way that seems noteworthy considering everything that had come before it. Perhaps a minor detail, but it conveys a message.
Additionally, there is the issue of timing. Four years after leaving Selling Sunset, Quinn is returning for the tenth season. She told Netflix’s Tudum that she is returning “with more perspective, confidence, and clarity.”She claimed that becoming a mother made her priorities more acute. She has stated that “growth can still come with an edge” in the show, so it seems unlikely that this will result in less conflict on screen, but her personal life now appears to be the more stable half of the equation.
The irony in this situation is difficult to ignore. A woman whose real relationship—the one occurring off-camera—seems to be the most stable thing she’s had in years is returning to the genre built on relationship chaos. It remains to be seen if that holds true once the cameras resume. But for the time being, Quinn and McGarrity appear to be doing something that reality TV seldom rewards: remaining together, discreetly, and according to their own terms.
